Why Did I Decide To Run My Own PersonmalI Mastodon Server?

I decided to finally join Mastodon publicly.  I’ve been on a number of separate instances which focused on special interests and will remain on them, but for my “public facing presence”, I decided to roll my own server (https://social.seanreiser.com/@seanreiser).  Here are my reasons:

• Trust - Joining an instance run by someone else is trading an evil overlord for a potential evil overlord.  As we’ve seen with the Twitter Takeover how quickly censorship can become imposed on a social media platform.  You might think “I can always move to another instance”.  Mastodon is open source, it would take a competent programmer 20 mins to disable the code to port an account to another server.
• Longevity - Anyone who has been on the web for a while knows how quickly a platform can vanish and take your data with it.  I like having the data in a database I control/
• Branding - I don’t want the domain of the server to reveal anything about me, like the smaller special interest instances.  By using a subdomain of seanreiser.com, I enhance my brand.
• Connectivity - For good or for bad server admins can block other servers.  If I’m @sean@jetsfan.example, I don’t want an administrator blocking access to my friend @tim@patriotnation.example.  I want to control who I am blocked from.
• I’m just “that guy” - I’ve run my own mail servers and web servers and built my own RSS reader apps.  Why wouldn’t I run my own server?

I'm not saying you should use your own server, but those are my reasons.  You can follow me at @seanreiser@social.seanreiser.com

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